2015 Recommended Components Fall Edition Powerline Accessories

Powerline Accessories

APC AV S15BLK: $730 w/battery backup ★
The S15BLK is a comprehensive power source, conditioner, and controller that features extensible external power and isolated EMI/RFI filtration for each of its outlet banks. Voltage regulation is accomplished electronically and without the hysteresis or rebound problems of slower, motor-driven compensation. Protected even the heaviest of KR's loads while also eliminating gray colorations and intermittent chassis vibration. "The S15 made the bridged eVo6 into an even better power amplifiera super amp." (Vol.28 No.9 WWW)

Audience Adept Response aR12-TS AC power conditioner: $8995 ★
The Adept Response provides power-factor correction, RF noise filtering, transient suppression, and 12 Hubbell high-conductivity power outlets. Each outlet is isolated from its input by one filter, and further isolated from the other outlets by a combination of two additional filters, allowing an entire audio system to be plugged into a single AR. BD noted a profound overall improvement in his system's performance, characterized by enhanced clarity, precision, low-level detail, image definition, soundstage size and depth, and tonal density. "A thoroughly thought out, well-designed, nicely executed manifestation of all that's currently known about power conditioning," said BD. "TS" changes from the earlier aR12 include: a new, larger ground with connections welded rather than bolted; Teflon capacitors throughout; and the use of monocrystal copper wire on the Teflon caps. With the aR12-TS in BD's system, dynamic transients expanded, resolution of low-level detail significantly improved, soundstages opened up, images became more dimensional, and voices took on additional harmonic richness. "The Audience aR12-TS is the best power conditioner I've heard," said BD. (Vol.30 No.4; Vol.34 No.10; Vol.35 No.1 WWW)

Audience powerChord: $539/6ft ★
"The wonderfully flexible powerChord, too, was a winner, significantly cleaning up the sound by lowering the noise floor, opening up the space between instruments, and significantly improving the system's resolution of low-level and inner detail." Though BD's reference, Synergistic Research's AC Master Coupler, offered better senses of space and ambience, the Audience was very nearly as good and much easier to use. (Vol.25 No.8 WWW)

AudioQuest 3 US AC power strip: $35
AudioQuest's sturdy little 3 US has three standard three-pronged power outlets and accepts a standard IEC power cord of any length and girth. "Plug in a good cable and you have a serious extension cord that will distribute AC where you need it," said KR. "Like having a power strip in your back pocket. You never know when you will need it," he sums up. (Vol.35 No.12 WWW)

AudioQuest NRG-X3 AC cord: $99/6ft
The NRG-X3 three-pole AC cord uses strands of long-grain copper for its semisolid, concentric-packed conductors. SM connected the NRG-X3 to the Emotiva ERC-2 CD player and heard a cleaner, brighter top end; faster, more assertive attacks; and longer, lovelier decays. "The AudioQuest NRG-X3 delivered more music, made more sense of the music, managed to more fully convey the artists' intentions, and made me a happy guy," he said. (Vol.35 No.1 WWW)

Ayre Acoustics L-5xe power line filter: $2450 ★
In an attempt to dissipate unwanted high-frequency energy riding on the AC line as heat, the L-5xe, built into the same case as Ayre's P-5xe phono stage, the L-5xe line filter uses a coil of wire wrapped around a nonferrous core for each of its four AC jacks. "Its slight softening effect seemed to improve image palpability, three-dimensionality, and midband texture," said MF. However, the Ayre's "pleasing romanticism" lacked the believability of the faster and more detailed Shunyata Hydra 2, he felt. With the L-5xe in his system, JM noted a taller, wider soundstage and sweeter highs, with no loss of resolution. "Without question, the L-5xe made the system more listenable," he decided. (Vol.30 No.7, Vol.36 No.10 WWW)

Brick Wall PW8R15AUD surge protector: $259 ★
This small, solid, black block is a series-mode surge protector rated for 15A loads and comes equipped with eight outlets in four filtered banks and a captive 14-gauge AC cord. Gave KR the sense that his equipment was safe from catastrophic insult without changing his system's performance whatsoever. (Vol.28 No.5 WWW)

CablePro Noisetrapper NANA power strip: $350 ★
Manufactured by Wavelength Audio Video and available at most Naim Audio dealers, the Noisetrapper NANA is an eight-outlet power strip featuring 12-gauge silver-plated OFC internal wiring, silver-soldered connections, and a hardwired, shielded power cord, all built into a nonmagnetic enclosure, and devoid of LEDs, MOVs, and filters which might corrupt performance. Plugging his entire system into this one strip, Art found "unambiguously good" performance: "My system was simply easier to listen to, and required less nervous energy on my part in order to convince myself I was hearing music." As of 2013, 12 gauge stranded UP-OCC wiring adds $100, Furutech high-performance IEC inlet adds $27.35, passive noise reduction package adds $30. (Vol.29 No.3 WWW)

Environmental Potentials EP-2450 Home Theater Power Supply: $1025.21Environmental Potentials EP-2050 Waveform Correction Absorber: $728.99 ★
The EP-2450, a lightweight, full-size chassis, has eight unisolated AC outlets that can pass 20 amperes of HF-filtered, ground-filtered, surge-protected AC, and comes equipped with a filtered and surge-protected coaxial line. KR used the EP-2450 to rid his system of noise generated from digital amps. "Reduced amp noise to effective inaudibility!" The E-2050 provides protection from AC-borne noise by means of a tracking filter, and uses a metal-oxide varistor to clamp and absorb surges. KR: "Examination of my house's line voltage on an oscilloscope revealed a smoother, cleaner 60Hz signal than before." (Vol.28 No.9 WWW)

Fono Acustica Sinfo power distributor: $9995
Made in Germany, the Sinfo is an attractive six-outlet power strip made of solid Panzerholz, a natural wood material said to protect against vibrations and electromagnetic-wave contamination. It uses Oyaide's top-of-the-line outlets and power inlet; the IEC blades are trimmed down from a phosphor-bronze slab, hand-polished, and plated with a combination of platinum and palladium. The outlets are connected with exotic, thermo-treated wire, and the Sinfo contains no capacitors, inductive filters, or transformers. With his gear plugged into the Sinfo, the sound of MF's system was consistently lusher, richer, and sweeter. Expensive. (Vol.35 No.12)

Furman IT-Reference 20i power conditioner: $3699 ★
Furman Sound's top-of-the-line power conditioner provides four duplex outlets offering balanced and power-factorcorrected AC, as well as two duplex outlets offering unbalanced power for high-current-draw power amplifiers. JM: "The IT-Reference 20i is built like a tank, and worked flawlessly. It brought a slight lowering of the noise floor without any reduction in dynamics." (Vol.30 No.10 WWW)

HiFi-Tuning Silverstar/Gold fuses: $39.95$59.95 each ★
These German fuses, distributed in the US by Ultra Systems, have silver filaments, ceramic bodies, and gold-over-silver terminations. Mikey replaced the cheap fuses in his Musical Fidelity kWP preamplifier and was rewarded with a subtle but noticeable improvement in smoothness and coherence. The HiFi-Tuning fuses worked well with both the Onkyo A-9555 and PS Audio GCC-100, imparting a clearer, more dynamic sound, with crisper transients, said RD. The element of the HiFi-Tuning Supreme fuse ($59.95, small; $89.95, large) is 99% silver impregnated with 1% gold. Its case is of ceramic rather than glass, for better resonance characteristics, and is cryogenically treated. Installed in the PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium integrated amplifier, the Supreme fuse created "a marked increase in clarity," said RD. Go figure! Available in various sizes. (Vol.30 Nos.2 & 9, Vol.35 No.5 WWW)

JPS Labs Aluminata AC Cable: $3999 ★
The Aluminata AC has three 8-gauge Kapton-insulated conductors and uses a Wattgate plug and IEC connector, both with gold-plated contacts. Along with the matching interconnects and speaker cables, the Aluminatas "brought a new measure of spaciousness, scale, smoothness, heretofore unimagined detail, and overall musical ease and naturalness to my music system," AD enthused. KR agrees with AD that the expensive Aluminata lowers his system's noise floor. (Vol.30 No.4 WWW; also see CS's VTL review in Vol.25 No.11)

JPS Labs The Digital AC-X Cable: $399 ★
Uses "very-high-purity" stranded copper conductors, insulated to a 300V rating and said to contain a special compound that absorbs and dissipates high-frequency energy. AD: "The Digital AC endowed the music with a better sense of flow and a smoother, more 'liquid' presentation....The sound was more open...with an easier, more natural sense of movement from note to note....The performance as a whole also seemed more dramatic and, in some spots, downright louder." He purchased The Digital AC to use with his Sony SACD player. Current "X" version has updated capacitors. (Vol.26 No.4 WWW)

Kimber Kable PK10 BASE PowerKord: $320/6 ft, other lengths are available at $26/ft. ★
ST used Kimber Kords throughout his system, and noted tremendous differences with a Jadis Defy-7. But try before you buy, he warns. (NR)

Nordost Qbase QB8: $1599.99
Of this AC strip's eight outlet sockets, only the one at the center of the strip goes straight to ground. For the remaining seven, resistors are inserted between the sockets and the ground in an attempt to reduce the noisy currents that can come from having multiple ground points of differing potentials within the system. (Vol.32 No.12 WWW)

Shunyata Research Triton power distributor: $4995
With the Triton in his system, MF noted blacker backgrounds, more low-level detail, and an enhanced sense of three-dimensionality. Add the Typhon for $4995, which, partnered with Shunyata's Triton, further blackened backgrounds, further enhanced low-level detail, and further expanded the sense of three-dimensionality, said MF. (Vol.36 No.11)

Silver Circle Audio Pure Power One 5.0 isolation transformer: $6000 ★
Though expensive, the Pure Power One 5.0 includes a 65-lb, 5kVA, custom-built isolation transformer, a proprietary EMI/RF filter, four double-ganged, gold-plated Furutech AC jacks, and a Vesuvius power cord. The PP1 5.0 eliminated noise and increased dynamic range, allowing music to emerge from the soundstage with far greater three-dimensionality. "There was no downside to using the PP1 5.0, only a big upside," said Mikey. Price includes shipping within continental US. (Vol.33 No.8)

Torus Power RM20 AC power isolation unit: $3295 ★
Torus Power's Power Isolation Units (PIUs) combine surge suppression with massive toroidal transformers to provide AC power conditioning and protection from voltage surges. The RM20 uses a single 2400VA toroidal transformer to supply 120V and 20 amperes to the 10 AC outlets on its rear panel. It has a 20A circuit breaker for its On/Off switch and uses a 14AWG detachable AC cord rated at 15A/125V. "The PIU greatly enhanced subtle details of tone, timbre, and imaging when dynamics were extreme or volume was loud," said LG. CS20 version has 17" faceplate (silver or black); also costs $3295. (Vol.31 No.1 WWW)

Wireworld Platinum Electra power cord: $1700/1m
Compared to the more expensive Shunyata Research ZiTron Anaconda, the Platinum Electra sounded less vivid and less natural, said MF. (Vol.36 No.11)

Deletions
Shunyata Research Hydra Triton power conditioner replaced by new version.

Under Disc Players, Transports, etc...there are some fine choices in all the categories and they all definitely belong on the list IMHO.

HOWEVER, you've completely left Esoteric products off the list; this begs the question as to how at least one of the myriad SOTA products (1box as well as multi-box) from Esoteric including the K-01x, K-03x, P-02/D-02, P-1/D-1s/etc...cannot be found on this list.

Their products did receive nominations from TAS and Stereophile for best-of categories for many years and have been bettered in terms of sound quality in more recent product releases; it leaves one wondering how they could be conspicuous by their complete absence from this year's and last year's lists???

it leaves one wondering how they could be conspicuous by their complete absence from this year's and last year's lists???

This is because we haven't reviewed any Esoteric products for a couple of years. (I favorably reviewed the D-07 D/A processor in 2011 - see www.stereophile.com/content/esoteric-d-07-da-processor.) The company has gone through major changes in its management and distribution and we are waiting for things to settle down before investing our resources in a review.

Thank you for the reply...there has been high praise on various forums for K01, K01X, K03X, P1/D1, P2/D2 and C02/C02X products from them. It is true with the buy of Esoteric away from Teac and Onkyo/Integra now providing support and sales things have changed and a number of us had to dig a bit to get contacts at the new company for everything from sales to support. It may be time to review them again however as the level of playback achieved by the P1/D1, P2/D2 and K01X is nothing short of stunning, certainly in line with many products that did make the list over the last couple of years. If you are interested in those contacts or talking directly with some Esoteric owners of multi-generations including the current ones, please let me know and I'll get you in touch.... There are other brands and products missing as well (check out Legacy "V" and "Aeris" for example) and the industry has grown,...perhaps the 500 number as a cut-off should be revisited and raised!

BTW...if there is a way to reach you via email, I'd be happy to pass on the contacts that some of us have found work for getting in touch with the Sales and Support side of the new Esoteric and to talk about some great music that is currently spinning....Have a great weekend!

Hello,
I am in the quest of a good noise-cancelling pair of headphones and I came across this bose quietcomfort 25 review.
They are far cheaper than the PSB M4U 2 but I don't know how they compare... Have you tried them ?